


Aftermath

by blacksmiley



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Jack Morrison only mentioned, Overwatch downfall, explosion at the Swiss HQ, reaper origins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 13:26:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13502436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacksmiley/pseuds/blacksmiley
Summary: The short story follows the aftermath of the explosion at the Swiss HQ, where Moira manages to help out Gabriel Reyes, who was heavily wounded.





	Aftermath

It was minutes after the alarm started when she finally decided to go out. People were just as clueless on the hallways, some heading towards emergency doors faster than others, doubting more or less the nature of the situation, whether if it was real or just an exercise. They did that once in a while just to ensure everything works, but people got so used to it, they didn't even react anymore. All Blackwatch emergency exits met in a large empty hangar. Its usually closed large doors were now wide open and the alarm was being overheard outside too.

 

When they all reached the outside, Moira looked around to see only confused people. The alarm was around the whole base, including the Overwatch headquarters by the loud sound of it. She looked around for a more familiar face that could maybe put her up to date to what was going on, when she spotted Gabriel.

 

"Gabriel!" She raised her voice, hoping to cover all the noise.

 

"Reyes!" She yelled louder and the man finally turned around to see her waving to catch his attention. But right when she was midway towards him something happened, deafening everything for a moment, and before anyone could react, the outcome came to surface. The explosion tossed everywhere blocks from few of the buildings nearby, including the one Reyes was at the entrance of.

 

A hard hit in the back of her head took her out of conscience, but the thick smoke of burning bodies and building remains brought her back to her senses with a violent cough. She took off her lab coat to cover her mouth and nose, then tried to peek around her for signs of life. Some were struggling to find their way out from the smoke, while others were no more than corpses beneath concrete.

 

"Reyes!" She gasped for herself, bursting again into cough and trying to find her way back to where the man used to stand before the explosion occurred. There was nothing left of the entrance apart from the now slightly bent metal pillars of the gate. Her eyes searched around in panic while her mind tried to remember the moments before the impact and right after. It was there, the swirling smoke happened before she got blown away.

 

Despite her rather controversial reputation, people started to clung onto her arm as she began to walk slowly, lost deeply in her thoughts, blind and deaf to the rest around her. By the time she reached the furthest entrance of the building she first left when the alarm went off, which led to her research lab, someone's grip shook her out her thoughts. It wasn't the grip itself but the strange familiarity of the feeling of it against her skin; a cold touch, unlike the burning air around, feeling humid like a late fall's mist. She turned around, her eyes widened in shock.

 

"You're alive!" She lowered her lab coat from the face, looking at the figure before her, which couldn't be called human anymore, even if it partly had the shape of one.

 

"Calling this alive? It feels like I'm falling apart.." A voice like an echo, hardly resembling Gabriel's filled the air around them, before he dropped to his knees, almost pulling her along as he returned to his fully physical state, covered in burns.

 

Swirls of thick, dark smoke formed and detached from his skin, intensifying as his breaths quickened, panic raising on his face, hyperventilating. His wounds seemed to be switching between healing themselves and burning with the thick smoke, revealing flesh and bone and the faster his breathing went the more it intensified the process, like a smoldering fire being blown at. Moira stared at him for few moments and then she realized panicked voices started to get louder and louder. Someone was approaching and he couldn't be seen like this. She lowered at his level and with her arm looped around his back, beneath his arms, managed to pull him on his feet and as quick as she could, help him back inside her lab, to which she blocked access into right after.

 

Once locked together inside, she left his side, hurrying to her tablet and switching on few devices. A loud chain of metal against metal noises followed her quick departure as the man stumbled upon a counter full of instruments, tossing part of them on the floor as he struggled to keep himself up on his feet, his pained moans filling the cold atmosphere of the room.

 

"Why isn't it working.. Moira.. 'm dying.."

 

"You're not dying.." She responded more to self, as she kept adjusting parameters on the screen, the DNA image associated to them switching continuously while she did so.

 

It was minutes until he reached her side, nearly crawling, clinging onto everything his hands could reach, but it all seemed like hours of agony.

 

"Shouldn't you rather look at me instead of that damn screen? I am the one burning alive with this sick gene you put into me." He muttered low, holding moans back. "Moira.." He hissed between his teeth.

 

"I.. " She paused, looking at the molecules on the display finally arranging, all spinning in a perfect sync. She turned her attention to Reyes, whose state was rather worse than better.

 

"I only have the tech I need at the Oasis lab, but.. How can I take you out like this? I can't.. We need a ship to take us there." She frowned and for the first time in the last hour she looked rather troubled by the whole situation.

 

"I can't go out like this.." He looked to his side, thoughtful, but still pained. "Call them here, Moira." He raised his eyes back to meet the woman's.

 

"Who..?"

 

"Talon. You're working for them, aren't you?"

 

She searched his face, her lips parting slightly as she tried to figure an answer. She wondered how he knew and for how long.

 

"I.. Yes. Yes, I am. But.. What if they say no?"

 

"A big ass explosion just shattered the whole base and there's a chance it might be their hand anyway, so what would hurt them to come for a pickup and check the aftermath?" A grimace that resembled some sort of questioning look on his face made Moira ponder the situation and finally nod into agreement.

 

An opened app, a code introduced and they went into a video call within seconds, which ended with a pick-up ship being sent their way.

 

"You might not like what you're getting into, Reyes." She added on a rather warning tone.

 

"Wouldn't be the first time.."

 

For a safe transfer, Moira decided to put Gabriel to sleep, while being containted and transported in the glass incubator to avoid exposure as much as possible, not only from other's eyes but for his safety, considering how unpredictable his body reacted to the environment.

 

By the time they reached the destination, her lab was already prepared for the intervention by her assistants, so the man did not came back to his senses until two days after when he finally woke up, stabilized and mostly recovered.

 

"Gabriel, can you hear me?" Moira asked as she grabbed a small flashlight from her pocket to examine his eyes. He only let out a weak moan in response. During his life he's been asked this so many times, he lost the count. The situation at SEP was often uncontrollable and found himself passing out during the injections since he was a living experiment and nobody could predict exactly what the body's reactions will be.

 

"Can you see my finger? Track it with your sight if possible." She started to move the finger from a side of his head to another. He noticed it, but his reaction was rather delayed. Everything around him seemed to be moving in slow motion, even the sound was slightly distorted.

 

"I will return a bit later. I will let the sedative effect fade from your system. I have attached you some vitamins to accelerate the process and revigorate you a bit." He felt her hand touching his exposed forearm in the smallest comforting manner before leaving. He couldn't see it himself yet, but he could tell that apart from some drones floating around and the humming of machines connected to his body, he was alone. He closed his eyes and let himself fall back asleep.

 

When he woke up again, all was clear for his eyes and ears, but lying down on his back didn't offer him much of a view. The glass ceiling above him however, indicated that it was night. He frowned wondering how many nights actually passed ever since he left the shattered base and what became of what was there. What became of the survivors, of Overwatch and.. Jack. Where was he during the explosion? His pulse raised at the thoughts, allerting Moira through her device, causing her to show up within seconds.

 

"I see you woke up." She said flatly, rushing to the monitoring display, giving him only a short glance.

 

"How long..?" He hardly articulated. His mouth was dry and a pain crossed his head from a temple to another as the woman detached some sensors off him, making him close his eyes in pain.

 

"Stay still." She held him on place with a hand on the chest as he wanted to raise, one hand cupping his forehead, his fingers pressing at the sides of it.

 

"Reyes, please."

 

"Let me get up." His grip firm, pushed her hand away from his chest, and yet held onto it as he seated himself up. Her eyes kept wandering from him and his reactions to the large display at the side of his bed. His hormones and pulse raised suddenly at a critical level when pain hit his temples again, making him mutter something under his breath.

 

"Gabriel! Calm down!" Her voice raised.

 

"What did you do to me?!" His hoarse voice filled the silence of the room, the high ceiling turning it into an echo, making Moira take some steps behind as he pushed himself off the edge of the bed, struggling to stand up straight, a hand still gripped around his forehead, his eyes nearly shut with pain.

 

"Calm down and I will explain you." Her voice was steady, but there was a trace of panic in her eyes. The button for security was close to her reach and she was ready to press it for help if anything happened. He was unpredictable, but she worked with him before, she knew he would panic when his body did things he wasn't fully aware of. He detached all the sensors from his body and took distance from the bed. He started to feel the cold floor beneath his feet sending shivers through his entire body as his approached the closest glass wall, which was now a large mirror. His hand rested against it and when his eyes finally met his reflection he saw himself, nearly naked, wearing only the medical robe, with red leds lighten up at his temples, right where the pain was radiating from. What were those things? There was a wire implanted into his skin, going over and behind his head, connecting the small red leds to something else he couldn't see yet. There was no more smoke coming out from the body, but there were a thousand more things filling his mind with questions at that moment. The woman just stood near the bed and watched him now slowly collapse against the window, his body sliding against it as both of his hands cupped his head. She felt sorry for him.

 

He understood after Moira finally explained him the entire process he went through, that the leds at his temples would help him control his altered form more easier, but that it still needed tweaks depending on how he will report he feels like with them on. She also suggested that, with his smoke form heavily affected as aftermath of the explosion he was caught into, and his mollecular structure more sensitive to his emotions than before, he should get a spinal implant, which would protect a very important part of his nerve system. He eventually agreed with it and it was over a year later when he was finally able to control his body properly and allow himself to get back into business. Business which now minded Talon, as Overwatch along with everything related to it got shut down not long after the explosion, many afraid to return and keep it going, with no leader support to fight the world's opinions that turned rather against them, since Jack Morrison was dead. Gabriel was thought to be dead as well for the world, since Talon kept his identity safe and secret from the outside eyes, as most of its existance, apart from the times they decided to strike, lurking out of nowhere, like an omnipresent shadow. And a shadow he became as well, a symbol of the terrorist organization; an omen that left only corpses behind whenever he showed up. A dark, hooded silhouette, spreading terror and death. The Reaper as he was metaphorically addressed to by the poor souls praying him for life, wherever Talon sent him to strike.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I know I mentioned the death of Jack, but we all know he isn't and will return as Soldier76!


End file.
